Side by Side

"No way to let him get ahead of me!"

The first game in the series, released in July 1996 in Japan, with the 2005 edition of Domestic and Overseas Arcade Game List reporting an US release the month prior - which, if it did saw release there, appeared to be one of the company's few last releases before their American operations shuttered around the same year. (Taito USA's address is still listed in the game's flyer, coincidentally; however, the only known English version of the game was compiled in September 1996.)

The original Side by Side is considered one of the rarest games nowadays, as most of them (in original twin cabinet configuration) were seemingly converted to its sequel, Side by Side 2 Evoluzione.

• Official website (Wayback Machine)
• TCRF page
• Flyer

Note

If you are emulating any Taito JC System game in MAME, you should be running version 0.266 with -cheat switch and overclock the maincpu, sub, and dsp CPUs to at least 200%. Properly overclocked, it should run like this. Currently, Taito JC games suffer from a slowdown due to imperfect CPU emulation. Starting from version 0.267, changes in Motorola 68000 FPU emulation has made the performance worse, even overclocked.
It is also recommended to set the master volume in Sound Test to maximum, as the default volume can be very quiet.

Warning

For the first Side by Side in particular, if you win a race with overclocked CPU as mentioned above, MAME can also crash if you reach the Congratulations screen.

WIP

Builds

Build Tag	Language/Region	Dump Status	Notes
SIDE BY SIDE VER 2.5 J 1996/ 6/20 18:13:14	Japanese	In MAME (sidebsjb)	Earliest Japanese version, added to MAME in version 0.81u4.
SIDE BY SIDE VER 2.6 J 1996/ 7/ 1 18:41:51	Japanese	In MAME (sidebsja)	Added in MAME in version 0.175.
SIDE BY SIDE VER 2.7 J 1996/10/11 14:54:10	Japanese	In MAME (sidebsj)	Added in MAME in version 0.148u3.
SIDE BY SIDE VER 3.0 OK 1996/ 9/ 2 20:04:19	English	In MAME (sidebs)	English version, added in MAME version 0.263. Built two months before Japanese 2.6 version and a month prior to 2.7. K in region tag probably means South Korea ("Overseas + Korea"?) In addition to language, the Savanna and Efini branding on the RX-7s are not used. At least one cabinet is known to exist, at Deck Amusements, Dymchurch, England, as of 2017.

Cabinets

WIP

Cars

See the SBS1 Cars page.

Tracks

See the SBS Tracks page.

Tip

Hold View button after coining up to temporaily unlock the Special course.

Others

• Unlike in later games, the in-race music cannot be changed. Races on Spring, Summer, and Special courses have "Blue Wind" as soundtrack and on Autumn and Winter tracks have "Red Road" play. (Neither of these songs appeared in Side by Side Special or in the Battle Gear games.)
• By default, races run for three laps. The operator can set this (in Configuration ➡️ Lap) to be between two to five laps. (All races on SBS1 tracks in Side by Side Special are three laps long as that game lacks the option to set how long races can be.)

Warning

All cabinets must have the same amount of laps set if they are linked, or the game's multiplayer will break where the player(s) playing on the cabinet with less laps set will always win the race.